A photographic legacy

"Irreplaceable" architect Jan Kaplicky has died aged 71, hours after the birth of his daughter. Key credits of Kaplicky include the Lords Media Centre and the Selfridges store in Birmingham. Richard Rogers said he had "watched Future Systems produce an amazing range of elegant buildings over the years and his most famous is Selfridges in Birmingham", http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jan/15/architect-jan-kaplicky-dies. The Czech born architect used modernism which he developed from the Czech modernist tradition.

Richard Rogers described Kaplicky as “a brilliant and astonishing architect, one of a small handful of true visionaries. Like many architects, the majority of his projects have not been realised", http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=781&storycode=3131514.

Images taken by myself, Creative Commons copyright, http://flickr.com/photos/feltip

Perhaps a fitting tribute for the architect described as irreplaceable by Rogers and Foster is that his Future System's Selfridges store in Birmingham was rated in 2006 as the third most photogenic building in Britain that people wanted to photograph. The survey was commissioned by Fujifilm in 2006 with the Selfridges store featuring on a stamp designed by the Royal Mail being issued in June 2006. The architecture series of stamps featuring Selfridges showed buildings which had won or been nominated for the RIBA, Royal Institute of British Architects, prize.

Image reproduced from http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2006/06/20/selfridges_stamp_feature.shtml

A Birmingham shopping centre has beaten off competition from Edinburgh Castle and Tower Bridge to be named one of the UK's favourite landmarks.
London landmarks took the top two places, with Big Ben and the London Eye taking first and second place.

The Bullring came third in a survey of which landmark people most wanted to snap, putting Edinburgh Castle fourth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4762807.stm